Mountaineering experience

[pozorvlak]

"What you need is combat experience. That's what keeps you alive in real combat."
"OK, but how can you tell the difference between combat experience and real combat?"
"Simple. If you're alive at the end, it was combat experience."
(From The Ballad of Halo Jones)
Saturday's trip to the hills started inauspiciously: I slept through all my alarms, and

Comments

[mrkgnao]

I don't know anything about mountaineering so I'm just here to be generally supportive but otherwise unhelpful. Firstly, I'm *so glad* you're both (generally) okay and it sounds like a genuinely terrifying experience. I think it's very grown up of you to be so determined to Learn Important Things from it - I'd probably still be cowering under my bed :)

For what's it worth - and from a perspective of total ignorance - I don't think it's your fault, although I suppose as the experienced mountain-dude (or whatever the technicalterm for you is) the ultimate responsibility lies with you. I guess what I'm trying to say is that 'fault' and 'responsibility' are slightly different things, and that fault, to me, implies a pejorative ... as if you'd been actively or dangerously incompetant or something. The other thing I wanted to mention was that, when disaster struck, it sounds like acted very sensibly indeed which is also important.

So, yeah, if I had to get injured halfway up a mountain in the snow I'd totally choose you to be there

[ext_5743]

I'm glad you're both okay, too.

I'm not going to add too much more to what everyone else has said, except to suggest that you might consider snow chains (about £15 a set, and a universal fit onto all footwear) as a cheaper alternative to crampons - they work very well on snow and hard ice on moderate slopes, and don't go blunt. They're obviously no substitute for the real thing for serious mountaineering, but for walking on icy tracks and paths they actually perform better than crampons. Most Scottish mountaineers I've spoken to have never heard of them, though!

[elvum]

I think that a lot of the points that I'd have made have been made already, particularly by nastyicydeath, especially the one about people who weren't there not being fit to pass judgement. :-)

I've been in some similar situations - I've glissaded down grade 1 snow gullies in Scotland (with nastyicydeath, as it happens), but in conditions of soft snow and with a huge run-out, and I've climbed steep snow slopes in trainers, but again, only when the snow conditions were right to make that safe (so safe that it was impossible to glissade down again, as it happens

[anonymous]

I'm very glad you came down the mountain without more serious injuries. Hitting the eyebrow is far better than the eye

[pozorvlak]

We were parked at Dalrigh, so we were heading for the bridge there. We'd ignored it in the morning, because taking it would have put us on the overly-winding route through the forest. And yes, I know we got to the summit late: this was part of the reason I chose the route down, since it would put us on a path sooner. Probably the wrong decision though, as you say.

[pozorvlak]

Besides, who are you to be lecturing me on taking unnecessary risks? :-)

Steep learning curve

[meganedriver]

Well as the Jo in question I am extremely grateful for Miles's assistance in getting me off the mountain in one piece. I don't for one moment agree with the nurse that it was Miles's fault (and never said anything to that effect). The fact that the nurse had seen hills on his frequent drives up to Fort William and Oban (he was a landscape photographer)didn't mean he knew anything about them - in fact he was asking questions like how do you get up them and where are the roads to the top, makes it quite clear that he knows nothing of hill walking and so was in no position to lay the blame with Miles. I'm just glad I went first as I wouldn't have liked to have been blamed for Miles's condition

Re: Steep learning curve

[dynix]

You're absolutely right about ice-axes...

(Sorry Sam;))

http://sammoore.livejournal.com/38399.html

Re: Steep learning curve

[sammoore]

Hell, if people learn from my idiocy..... :-)